Chapter 56

56

Dear John,

I suppose it’s beyond time to explain something to you.

I’ve been hinting at it, tossing you bits and pieces of information, hoping that they would whet your appetite while prolonging the inevitable. Now, this late in our relationship, as I feel I’m reaching the end of a very long cul-de-sac, I think it’s time to tell you about the accident.

You never really got the chance to meet Jamie when she and I weren’t polar opposites. Moments before the events I’m about to describe occurred, she and I were happy, this much you can be sure of. Instead of heavily drinking, I was heavily writing, finishing work at a breakneck pace while Jamie attended collegiate classes during the day. A little under two years ago we were perfect strangers embarking on an unsuspected voyage together. Soon we had become best friends, igniting fires within one another that pushed us both towards greater heights.

The morning of June 21st, the morning of current recollection, brought about a sudden change in Jamie and I’s relationship. Jamie, who had been complaining of nausea, had just returned from a visit to her doctor’s office. I was sipping coffee and absently perusing the Sunday newspaper when she opened the door with the news.

“We’re pregnant,” Was what leapt from her mouth. I swallowed hard on some coffee and then joined in her elation.

Consciously, we weren’t trying for conception and planning for its arrival was easily the last thing we as a couple were equipped to do, but as the idea of having a child together, a beautiful representation of our love for one another, began to settle in, both Jamie and I entered a world of preparation that brought us even closer together.

Six weeks passed. By this time everyone knew we were expecting. Cards had been sealed into envelopes, stamped and postmarked, and Jamie’s friend Sara was already planning a baby shower. We began discussing our current living situation. I needed an office, but the baby needed a room, which, as you could imagine, had never come up as I lived alone in my quiet two-bedroom home.

Names began to develop…seven to be exact. At the top of my list, Michael and Madison. At the top of hers, Joshua and Elizabeth. We argued playfully about these names each night before contently, with my hands on her stomach, we both fell asleep.

We entered September on a Sunday. Jamie woke with a bit of morning sickness at 7:18 a.m. She noticed, while outside for a breath of fresh air, that this was already shaping up to be a glorious day and had made the decision that we would be spending this day outdoors.

She wakes me with a kiss on the lips, her hair brushing against my cheeks and nose, her scent forcing my mind to attention. “I’d like to go for a walk today, Richard. It’s such a beautiful morning.”

I concede and get out of bed and agree that, yes, this is an exceptional morning, one of those days that if you happen to oversleep, everyone you encounter seems to rub that fact into your face.

We begin every walk in a very similar fashion, a quick parting of lips, a brief kiss on the mouth, a ten to fifteen second pause and then finally departure, left leg first. We walk the same path to the gulch that we’ve walked countless times before. We see the same trees, the same rocky outcrops and occasionally the same birds we’ve seen before. To this day I continue to wonder, if everything seemed to start the same this particular morning, why was the end result so far off the pace?

In order to reach the base of the gulch one must follow the trail across the top of a ridge and then make and easy climb down into the crevasse. We’ve made this climb hundreds of times before; therefore caution was the last thing we heeded as Jamie begins to make her decent.

The sky was a cloudless blue; the sun was bearing down on us, but was gentle in its heat. There was a slight breeze that came from the west pushing a small bit of leaves out from under the closest tree. I watch her take her first step and admire her like a painting.

And now I’ve prolonged the inevitable as much as possible, held the final piece of the puzzle just out of your arm’s reach just as long as I can. But unfortunately, it seems as if we’ve reached the moment of revelation. The sentence I’ve avoided for so long is now forcing its way out of my pen. So, without further delay…

Jamie, as she looks up at me and smiles, as she takes her fourteenth step into the gulch, as the branch she’s holding onto for support breaks root and jumps from the ground, suddenly looses her footing and begins to fall.

Chapter 55

55

And suddenly I am alone.

In slow motion I watch, completely detached from the situation, as Jamie lowers her head into her hands. I see the tears start to form in the corners of her eyes as if I were staring at a bullet being fired from a gun. They well up and discharge just before her face dives into her palms.

And suddenly I am alone.

John has stopped stirring his scrambled eggs, released his spatula, and turned to face Jamie and I’s head on collision. I feel as if he is reaching out to both of us with an amazing force of energy, but his attempts to stop our impending wreck are in vain. Once these events have been set into motion there is only one inevitable conclusion.
And suddenly I am alone.

We’ve been waiting for this day for too many years, wondering how the circumstances of life’s misfortune would turn out against us. We said goodbye on that gloomy day in June many years ago, but it seems like only minutes ago that she was gathering up her belongings into three brown suitcases, all varying in size. The moment she left the phone stopped ringing, the wind started blowing, and it began to smell like an eternal rain. We decided that we couldn’t live together anymore. But what I realized, once she had left, was that I couldn’t live without her anymore. I was useless. I was humbled.

And suddenly we are alone.

John has left the kitchen, turned off the burners and pre-rinsed his pans. The sun is shining through the window curtains draping Mary’s favorite floral patterns across the linoleum floor. Jamie is breathing heavily through the cracks in her fingers, desperately hiding her eyes from our spectral past. I pull out a chair and seat myself across from her. The table itself is the Golden Gate Bridge.

We are alone and we haven’t seen each other in a very long time. I reach across the table and instinctively push a bit of her hair back behind her left ear. She looks up from her hands and meets me eye to eye. It takes ages to gather up my strength.

“It’s been a while,” I smile, as the piece of hair I had just tucked away falls back in front of her face. “It’s good to see you, kid.”